


Of Loss and Recovery

by pineapple_split



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Compliant, James just keeps loving people, M/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Post-Canon, also some past - James/OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22026433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapple_split/pseuds/pineapple_split
Summary: A look through the years at James and his soft heart.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38
Collections: Black Sails Gift Exchange 2019





	Of Loss and Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> Written for we-didnt-playtest-this-at-all for the 2019 Black Sails Gift Exchange. I'm a little nervous about this, but I think I've picked it through as much as I can stand. I haven't published any of my writing in some time, but what better way to get back into it than a character study for the best character in fiction, James Flint? 
> 
> Not beta read, all mistakes are mine.

Thomas - the truest, the fiercest, the one who filled his life to the brim and whose loss nearly destroyed him - was not the first. James' memories of the first are distorted and fickle, as if seeing them through water. He couldn’t say the officer’s name or where he hailed from. Time had stolen those details from him ( _or maybe he’d let them go, maybe he instinctively knew that he would do well not to remember_ ). With obscured features, the ginger haired officer held his eye for a beat too long before James dismounted. Their shoulders brushed as each passed to his quarters. Once, a fleeting brush of the hands left James flexing his fingers for the rest of the day. They never spent much time alone, but James was always aware of the other’s presence. It confused him. He was at once hot all over and suddenly, frighteningly chilled to the bone. He wanted the officer to look away, then silently cursed him when he did.

Finally: after a pint too many and some slurred excuses about finding a brothel - met with great fanfare and cheers from the rest of the navy men - an awkward fumble tucked in the dark behind the stables. It was over almost before it began, but James was breathless just the same. Lifetimes later, he’d remember little of the frigid night or how the physical sensations felt or how they had rested their foreheads together and huffed out some approximation of laughter. Rather, what would catch his memory was the small brightness that sprung up in his chest like a lit candle. It was warm.

The experience was never repeated. No longer than a fortnight passed before his erstwhile paramour departed for another crew. Or perhaps, that voice whispers even now, he was sent away. The morning after the departure, Hennessy had clapped James on the shoulder and that had been that.

( _He knew, he knew, even then he knew._ )

James had successfully put the whole incident out of his mind until he found himself sitting in Lord Thomas Hamilton’s salon.

\----------

Thomas was (frustrating, confusing, brilliant, kind, hopeless, foolish) _fascinating_. James found him fascinating. He rarely took interest in anyone, as Hennessy liked to fondly tell him. But Thomas would talk circles around him before looking at James with that half smile and lamenting “you’re never satisfied with conceding a point, are you Lieutenant?”

They read together. They talked into the night, long after the salon had concluded ( _improperly long_ a voice hisses). James dined with the Hamiltons more nights than he didn’t. He accompanied Miranda to exhibitions and plays, and then they returned to the Hamilton’s London residence, and Thomas. The feeling he had when around them - well that was probably happiness, wasn’t it? He smiled easily when Miranda greeted him at the door. Easier still was retiring to Thomas’ study and insulating themselves from the world. He spun Miranda around the drawing room to some jaunty sea shanty not fit for civilized ears; laughed as she took the lead (most unladylike) and sent him swirling into Thomas; stumbled in the moment before Thomas’ sure grip held him fast. He couldn’t dream of any other way to live. He didn’t want to. These people - Miranda a bright jewel in dreary conventional London, Thomas something else entirely, something James couldn’t even name - they were home.

When Thomas kissed him in the shadow of the dining room’s candlelight, James felt it again. The small light, the warmth that made some wild thing in him settle. It was right. And after, when Thomas embraced him and Miranda quietly came over to place her hand on his - that was right, too.

( _You should have known_ the voice later whispers to him. _You should have been prepared. You shouldn’t have given it all up so easily_.)

\----------

Everything after was simultaneously a haze of rage and focused, deadly intent (with the occasional reminders: _this is what it was like to laugh. This is what you don’t deserve to have anymore_ ). It was many years before James felt his soul calm again. He came close, sometimes. He couldn’t ask for a better friend or quartermaster than Hal Gates. All told it was far easier to take on Flint’s mantle than it perhaps should have been, but Hal’s reasonable intercessions to the crew on his behalf were indispensable. Flint could trust him as he could trust few others. Whether he needed to hunt a small prize or spend weeks not hunting altogether (or sell the crew on the haul of a lifetime), Hal was right there beside him.

Until he wasn’t, until Flint himself or circumstance or some divine interference pushed Hal so far he said “I’m taking the Ranger and I’m leaving.”

Hennessy had told him once that no one, not even James himself, knew what he was capable of. He so hated proving the bastard right.

( _You’re losing them_ the voice tells him, smugly.) One by one, Hal and Miranda and Eleanor all seemed to turn from his path, from him. Couldn’t they see, couldn’t they understand that he was fighting for their freedom to live safely out from under England’s yolk? There was nothing of greater importance. Why couldn’t they see?

\----------

“I will stand here with you for an hour, a day, a year …..” Silver tells him, but James can barely hear through the rushing of blood in his ears. This cannot be. He cannot have sacrificed so much or covered his hands in so much blood to have it taken from him now. But his friend is pointing a pistol at him. His friend is saying, this is the end. And Silver has the nerve to look like it’s _his_ heart that’s breaking. ( _You always knew he was dangerous_.)

People like Flint die violently, loudly and definitively. Every corner of the world feels the reverberations. He’s always been prepared for that possibility. But this - this slow bleeding out of everything that mattered, the aching hollow left behind after Silver blew up the ground they were standing on…. This, he isn’t prepared for. What a cruel trick of fate must it be, to have his world stolen from him twice over? For his life to end, again, because he was at once too much and not enough? ( _Too profane_.) James is as frozen now as he was the day Hennessy looked him in the eye and cast him out. Powerless. Shattered. A decade has gone by and scarcely anything has changed.

A flock of birds rises into the sky as one and breaks the silence. Silver starts talking. He spins a tale that so stretches the limits of belief it’s almost patronizing. Does he think James is so blinded, to not see through such an obvious ruse? James _taught_ him this. The best way to get a man to fall in line is not just to promise him everything he’s ever wanted, but convince him that you yourself are his sole means of getting it. Silver has the audacity to try and turn that on him now?

 _Please stop_ , he almost begs.

“Do not speak his name” is what he says. Silver falls silent, then slowly sits on a log and releases his breath as if he’s carrying hundreds of years upon his back. As if it’s his own life and meaning that’s being torn to shreds. He’s long since lowered his pistol. He knows he’s won. He knows James won’t kill him.

“It's the truth,” he says simply. “I know you think it’s a trick. I know it sounds like a trick. If I were in your position, I’m certain I’d agree with you.” He pauses, runs a hand over his face. His next words are careful and enunciated. “But I wouldn’t lie to you about this. If you believe nothing else from me - please try to believe that. I wouldn’t lie to you about him.”

James has nothing to say to that, and nothing to say to him. The helplessness and grief and betrayal are all clamoring in his throat. He’s choking on it all. He could rage. He could launch himself the short distance and tackle Silver to the ground. He could wrap an arm around his quartermaster’s throat once again, another true friend who lost faith in him. How cyclical life is. But he knows he won’t do any of those things, because even now, even with everything being taken from him, hurting John Silver is antithetical to his being. And that’s how he knows it’s over. He’s given this treacherous man importance over his own self, and it’s the death sentence Flint always knew it would be.

He looks away and stays silent. Long moments pass, with Silver considering him and James feeling his life and purpose slip away. Finally, Silver whistles and his lapdogs emerge from the forest. When Hands expresses some measure of disbelief, Silver bites out “this is what I’ve decided” and the matter is settled. They bind his arms behind his back and lead him away. James doesn’t hear the explanations offered to Rackham - he’s staring at the carcass of his former ship. ( _James Flint, captain of the Walrus_ , the voice mocks. _Dead on an uncharted island. Mourned by none_.) He’s silent on the voyage to Nassau, silent during the nighttime exchange as he is transferred from ship to longboat. The last he ever sees of John Silver is a figure at the quarterdeck watching him leave.

( _Here, he abandons you._ )

A block of ice has formed in his stomach and James feels it consume him.

\----------

Plantation life is not all idyllic, especially once the initial euphoria has faded. The labor is backbreaking, the foremen unforgiving. Night patrols scour the perimeter and make themselves known beneath every quarter’s window. A guard bunks with the men in each cabin and haunts their steps through the day. Thomas is in a completely separate housing row from him - they’re almost at opposite ends of the plantation altogether. But he’s here. Most mornings, James scarcely believes it. Not even seeing him all over again and gripping his hand as they head toward the fields chases away the fear that none of this is real. He knows not whether this is a dream or some kind of afterlife and his body really is rotting away on that island. But the new blisters that form on his hands, not so used to a shovel as a sturdy rope - those are real. The dirt that cakes itself on him and slips into his shoes - that is real.

“I am real,'' Thomas tells him as they make their way back from the fields. They manage to linger long enough to walk back together, always. The foremen turn a blind eye, or perhaps simply don’t believe men so thoroughly broken can cause much trouble. “I am real, James… but are you?” He’s weeping again, and all James can do is embrace him. If this be heaven or hell or some measure of in between, he submits to it gladly. It’s not what it was - it will never be what it was - but after so many years, it just might be enough.

Occasionally, the men are granted time to rest. As Mr. Oglethorpe likes to remind them, he’s not running a slave plantation. James flinches and directs his thoughts away from that subject. Best not to dwell on the past and all the people he failed. He can sit here with Thomas in some limited shade and rest their shoulders together and be soundly ignored by anyone who might have an opinion. _Count your blessings, son_ , Hennessy would say. James curses his once-father as he has every day since That Day and wonders if he will ever be free. The iron gates in the distance mockingly answer, _no._ James has well and truly been cast aside with the rest of England’s rejected chaff. Something that still smolders within him cries out at the injustice of it. But he is weary and beaten, and here is Thomas’ head on his shoulder. He never thought he’d experience this again.

Thomas, for his part, is quieter than he used to be. He’s prone to bouts of melancholy and slips into his own head seemingly without provocation. A younger James might have tried to draw him out. This James, or whatever remains of him, can only provide his lover silent company. There are no platitudes that can heal a ten years of open wounds. No assurances or apologies can make any of it right.

There are, however, a few lingering explanations due.

“I failed her,'' James says at the end of his account of Charleston. “And I failed you as well. She was committed to me to the end. But my care for her was unforgivably lacking. And in the end, I led her to her executioner.” Thomas tugs at his hair, bows his head toward the ground and says nothing for a long time. James lets him grieve.

“I’m sorry you lost her that way,” Thomas finally says. “There was no more loyal woman on this earth than Miranda. She would have walked into Hell itself with you.”

“It doesn’t follow that I should lead her there,” James counters. Thomas shakes his head, but says no more. Eventually, James thinks, he’ll talk about the dreams. He’ll tell all of it in time, and leave the decision to Thomas as to whether he recognizes anything in James at all.

Sometimes, he thinks of escaping. With the right timing, the right sharpened tool tucked into a boot, and an unlucky guard here and there…. He plans, and then he sees Miranda’s blood on his hands. He hears Alfred Hamilton begging him for mercy and remembers Abigail Ashe’s wide eyes in Eleanor’s tavern. He abandons his plans. ( _For now_.)

He sits in the shade with Thomas and tries to exist in the moment. The days are growing longer - more hours in the field ahead of them - and they bring a promise of warmth and sun. James joins their hands; Thomas pulls them up to place a kiss to his scarred knuckles. Somewhere, deep inside, James can feel himself beginning to thaw.


End file.
